ZDNet Government

David Gewirtz

In addition to hosting the ZDNet Government and ZDNet DIY-IT blogs, CBS Interactive's Distinguished Lecturer David Gewirtz is an author, U.S. policy advisor and computer scientist. He is featured in The History Channel special The President's Book of Secrets, is one of America's foremost cyber-security experts, and is a top expert on saving and creating jobs. He is also director of the U.S. Strategic Perspective Institute as well as the founder of ZATZ Publishing.
David is a member of FBI InfraGard, the Cyberwarfare Advisor for the International Association for Counterterrorism & Security Professionals, a columnist for The Journal of Counterterrorism and Homeland Security, and has been a regular CNN contributor, and a guest commentator for the Nieman Watchdog of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. He is the author of Where Have All the Emails Gone?, the definitive study of email in the White House, as well as How To Save Jobs and The Flexible Enterprise, the classic book that served as a foundation for today's agile business movement.

Well, it looks like celebrity fugitive Edward Snowden wants to come home to the US. I say yes: we'll be glad to provide some public housing. In other news, Iran is using social networking to spy (thereby joining your teenager), TrueCrypt quits, and to no one's surprise, healthcare cybersecurity is sickeningly bad.

It's Memorial Day here in America, a day we remember our heroes who made the ultimate sacrifice (and, in a way that's uniquely American, we stuff our faces with burgers and hot dogs in their honor). In other news, Facebook wants to listen in, the House tries to stop the NSA from listening in, and lots more. Stay safe out there!

This week, the vast majority of our government tech news revolves around cybersecurity, and, by extension, which is the lesser of two evils. We're seeing some awareness improvements in retail, but the price of America's protection against terrorism may be the loss of jobs and tech leadership around the globe.

In what is probably a first for Apple, the company opened up some information...but only about how US agencies request information. A House committee voted against collecting telephone metadata. All that and what's going on in government tech 'round the world.

In an exclusive interview with ZDNet's David Gewirtz, a senior NSA official explains why the agency regards security and civil liberties as more than a simple balancing act: "You have to have them both."

The FCC is trying to walk a fine line between completely giving into the the carriers and completely giving into the Netflixen of the world. There's the usual NSA/Snowden news-of-the-week, and Russia is once again not playing nice with others.

Conventional wisdom is the NSA used and benefited from the Heartbleed bug. But there's an interesting argument to be made that if the NSA had Heartbleed in its kit bag, it never would have gone after Lavabit. Plus all kinds of cybersecurity fears, Brazil's attempt to rewrite Internet rules, and more.

It's likely to be the worst vulnerability ever on the Internet. ZDNet's editors have been looking at the problem from all sides, including how to protect yourself and your users. This is our worldwide roundup special issue. Everything you need to know is in here.

Here's how you can make and receive Google Voice phone calls from any old wired phone you may have lying around your house. The only problem is that this might not be your best solution. That's coming in a later article.